Arriving on loan from Nice at Southampton, Mouez Hassen was once an undisputed starter at the Ligue 1 club despite only being 19 at the time.
Benched by Claude Puel midway through last season, the 21-year-old was replaced by Yoan Cardinale, who remains the Ligue 1 side’s number one, with Hassen relegated to third choice under Lucien Favre.
However, he feels no bitterness towards the now-Southampton manager, which is a good thing since he’s about to spend the next five months with him.
Explaining he has now ‘matured’ as a human being, the young goalkeeper is determined to continue his development as a player, even if things stagnated a bit over the past year or so with his lack of first-team football.
Unable to refuse a move to the Premier League, Hassen revealed the necessity of moving far away from Nice, a town and a club he was too comfortable in, surrounding by the wrong people.
He said: “I needed the penny to drop, and that meant leaving the cocoon. I felt the need to leave, to discover a new environment, a new culture. Today, the question around me isn’t football, it’s the entourage. It’s what I do outside of training. I need to be alone, only think about football and to not get distracted with what happens around football.”
Making his debut with Southampton’s U23s at the weekend and keeping a clean sheet against Leicester, Hassen is keen to show everyone what he can do: “It’s up to me to go find time on the pitch, the coach hasn’t guaranteed me anything”.
